Kurt Caswell - Laika's Window

While Robert Goddard had developed gyroscopic stabilization for rockets decades before Sputnik II , it was not yet standard hardware. In 1957 the easiest and most inexpensive way to stabilize a rocket in flight was to spin it, because when you spin an object it becomes a kind of gyro itself and highly resistant to changes in attitude. You want the rocket to fly like an arrow shot from a bow, and spinning it around its minor axis, which runs nose to tail, can achieve this. As the rocket gains altitude and enters orbit, it loses energy as its main engines burn out and drop away. Energy dissipation, and imperfections in the load balance of the rocket, causes this spin around the minor axis to become unstable, and the rocket will begin to spin around its major axis, which runs laterally across the center of the rocket body. As the rocket slows down, it begins to tumble end over end. Positioned in the nose cone of the rocket, Laika would have been spinning as if seated in the center of a merry-go-round during the rocket’s flight, and when it entered orbit and started to tumble she would have tumbled with it, like riding a Ferris wheel, around and around. The rate of this spin would have been relatively slow, Schombert told me, not above about one rotation per minute, otherwise “centripetal force would have locked Laika to the wall.”

It is necessary to take an imaginative leap here, for while we now know that Laika could see out and that the satellite was tumbling in its orbit, we cannot know what she saw, if anything. She was dehydrated and near death from her long delay on the ground, but even in her weakened state, as I see it, the answer to this question is that she saw everything. In the tumbling roll of the satellite, the little window turning over and over on the world, Laika was looking at everything there is, everything there ever was, her eyes taking in starlight that traveled across oceans of time to reach her, light from distant galaxies, from across a billion years, and she was looking down on the living Earth from orbit, even if in a chaotic whirl of the satellite’s motion, and she was the first to take in this view. She saw the Earth, the blue marble, fragile, vulnerable, a kind of spaceship itself floating in the black void, impossibly alone. While Ivanovsky claims that Laika was “unaware of what was happening to her and where she actually was,” I think she knew. If a dog is anything, it is sensitive and intuitive, and while Laika would not have had our understanding of orbit and space, I think she understood that something big had happened to her. I think she understood—in what way a dog can—that she had crossed the threshold of our world and was now far away. I think she sensed that she had flown into a forbidden realm, far beyond any place anyone had ever been before, a place so foreign, so formidable, so beyond the ken of the ordinary that it would now be nearly impossible for her to come home.

As Sputnik II struck a path over the continents, the Soviet Union announced to the world the successful launch and orbit of a living being. As with any news from afar during this time, the initial hours offered inconsistent reports, which were updated as more information came in. Once the West came to understand that the satellite carried a dog, the technological achievements the Soviets were lauding were brushed aside. Never mind that the rocket had lifted over 1,100 pounds into space and so could therefore send a nuclear warhead to America or anywhere else. Never mind that sending an animal into space meant the Soviets would soon be able to send a man into space. Never mind that, as Korolev had claimed, the way to the stars really was open. What was the dog’s name, people all over the world wanted to know, and how would it get back home?

Western media considered that the Soviet space dog program had launched dogs into space before and returned them using parachutes. Some had been featured alive and well at press conferences. Some had even given birth to litters of puppies. Perhaps the Soviets would bring the dog home under a parachute or using some other method yet unknown. Perhaps the dog was going to be all right. Other media reports doubted it could come back at all. The spacecraft was in orbit, so how could they get it down? The world stood anxiously by, hoping, even praying, for the dog’s safe return.

As Laika made her first and then second orbit, her capsule began to heat up. The data coming into the Soviet ground stations indicated that she was agitated, anxious, moving about, possibly barking. The forced-air cooling system inside the capsule was not keeping pace with the sources of heat: the spent rocket body still attached to the satellite, the electrical systems, the sun, and heat from Laika herself. But there was nothing anyone on the ground could do about it. Some sources indicate that thermal insulation protecting Laika’s capsule was damaged, which could have happened when the fairing separated from the satellite. Such damage isn’t unheard of, as in the case of the damaged heat tiles on space shuttle Columbia in 2003, which led to its destruction on reentry. Both Gazenko and Kotovskaya point to the sun as a major factor in heating Sputnik II . Due to its elliptical orbit, the satellite “spent longer in the sun than had been planned,” Gazenko said in an interview in Space Dogs , “and it began gradually to heat up.” In her article, Kotovskaya writes that the “temperature control system inside the capsule was designed so that, while orbiting the Earth, the satellite [would] make it in the shade at times” and cool down. “Unfortunately, the satellite orbit came to be much elongated, elliptical, and most of the time it was in the sunlight.”

According to NASA, the temperature range outside the ISS can be as cold as -250 degrees Fahrenheit (on the shady side of Earth), and as hot as 250 degrees Fahrenheit (on the sunny side). The cooling and heating system onboard the space station must be able to manage these extremes. When astronauts work outside the station, performing an “extravehicular activity,” also known as a spacewalk, their space suits too must be able to manage this temperature range. Even so, they sense these extreme temperatures through the suit. Temperature control for biological habitats in orbit is an ongoing challenge even in the twenty-first century, so it is not surprising that the Soviets didn’t get this quite right on their first try.

Dogs do not manage heat well. Normal body temperature range for dogs is 101 to 102.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Anything above that will cause an increase in heart rate and respiration (excessive panting), restlessness complicated by lethargy, and possibly vomiting and diarrhea. A body temperature of 106 degrees is often the line between life and death. If a dog’s body temperature rises to that level, it will likely die, and die soon if it cannot cool down. Dogs sweat only from a gland in the bottom of their feet, which is why some dogs will stand in cool water, or in their water dish, after vigorous exercise in warm weather. They also pant, gassing off heat and circulating cooling air through their mouth and nose and over their tongue. But even better than sweating from their feet and panting is to find protection and relief from the heat in cool water, in shade, or indoors.

John Smith, a veterinarian in Texas who allowed me to observe him performing both a spay and a neuter surgery, told me that heat exhaustion can become critical in dogs very quickly. If you are going to save a dog in heat distress, Smith said, you have to bring their temperature down rapidly, usually by immersing the dog in an ice bath. The dog is then very weak, vulnerable, and highly sensitive to temperature. Once cooled, the dog must be removed from the ice bath and stabilized, or else its temperature will continue to fall and the dog will die going in the other direction. If the dog can’t cool down, either on its own or with help, it will become increasingly lethargic and disoriented, fall into a coma-like state, and die. It doesn’t take long, perhaps ten or fifteen minutes, Smith told me, depending on how hot it is and how fit the dog is, and so how efficient it is at cooling itself. Humidity increases the heat challenge and the process can move along more rapidly. I asked Smith what dying from heat feels like for a dog. He looked at me for a moment and said, “Pain.”